


in low place, not in high place

by TolkienGirl



Series: All That Glitters Gold Rush!AU: The Full Series [280]
Category: The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Aftermath of Torture, Amputation, Estrela is everything that is good, Gen, Injury Recovery, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Trauma Survivors Unite, chapter 1 is set post-chapter 6 of someone who no longer is, she even manages to get a little honesty out of Maedhros
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-08
Updated: 2020-09-18
Packaged: 2021-03-05 19:13:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 9,725
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25780393
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TolkienGirl/pseuds/TolkienGirl
Summary: An eye in a blue faceSaw an eye in a green face.“That eye is like to this eye”Said the first eye,“But in low place,Not in high place.”
Relationships: Arien & Maedhros | Maitimo, Arien & Morgoth Bauglir | Melkor, Maedhros | Maitimo & Morgoth Bauglir | Melkor
Series: All That Glitters Gold Rush!AU: The Full Series [280]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1300685
Comments: 9
Kudos: 26





	1. Chapter 1

Though it was dark, Estrela had gone to the garden. The scent of cold soil was sharper, in night air, than it was by day. She crouched down, her hands on her knees, bowing her head almost between her shoulders.

Overhead, there was no moon. 

No one expected her to do heavy work here; no one expected her to do any work at all. She chose mending, and she chose to mind the children (for they were still hers). She chose, too, to crouch and shudder, and she chose to move among the rows of winter vegetables. Moving or standing still, with no shackle round her ankle, no grim figure watching from afar.

_They would not return to port until winter._

_She lay on her belly on the deck of the ship, her shoulders bared. The sun so warm, the water moving under the air, sending salt up into the air, breathing and whispering, whispering—_

In the garden, she wept. All the grief that could pour out of one eye did, and she staunched her tears with a scrap of clean calico that Wachiwi had given her. Wachiwi liked to make little gifts to people.

_Her father had loved his lineage, but decried it, because of how many sins lived in Portuguese blood. She always believed that her future was her own, and that no sins belonged to a young life._

_She was so proud, and so afraid, watching mercury ooze like a vented vein._

The empty socket could not weep, any more than a new hand could sprout from Russandol’s empty wrist. The injustice of this sameness was a bond that tormented her day and night, for it was a mockery of every secret tenderness that she had cultivated in silence.

Oh, it was all wrong.

_She cut off her hair as soon as she was well enough to eat without aid. A rough knife was all she had at hand, and even that was not strictly permitted, so she had to work quickly. Hank after matted hank, filthy with sweat, blood, dust—it had lain heavy and useless behind her neck._

_She knew it was no longer beautiful; it was thus too late for it to be another loss._

She knew he was miserable. He told her of his misery, sometimes, in franker terms than he spoke to Fingon in her hearing. Yet, at other moments—moments such as those just before Finrod arrived, very grave of countenance—he had seemed eager to _rest_ in Fingon’s presence. Over his weary, faded features fell a childlike expression, as there had fallen in the first days that he was under her care in the encampment.

Her chief suffering, after all of his, was her certainty that the sight of her face was unbearable to him. He bore it better now, but was there comfort in that? Or only more misery?

 _Wash your face, child_ , she told herself, in the one voice left her: her own. She told Sticks and Frog to wash _their_ faces. She told them to eat their supper, now that they had supper. She told them to sleep, to wake, to treat the rest of the world with kindness.

She could not keep them safe forever, but she had hidden them _there_ , for a time. She must have hope here, and dry her own tears, and return to her duties.

There would still be firelight to mend by.

_Finrod loved his cousin. Estrela had known that before she had known of Fingon’s particular friendship, of Maglor and the rest. Finrod had spoken with her, in the little tent where she first lay, gaining strength and sustenance. In turn, she had told him what she could. She had not learned much from him, however, because there was too much to ever have hope of knowing._

“Want to say g’night to Russandol,” Sticks demanded, meeting her just inside Mithrim’s great hall. “We’ve not seen him in more than a day.”

“He is very tired, Sticks.”

“He’s always tired. Doesn’t it ever change?” Sticks folded her arms over her chest. She was wearing a bright neckerchief tied jauntily around her neck. Frog had his twisted in his trousers like a belt. More of Wachiwi’s work, if Estrela had to guess.

Estrela did not want to frighten them. They had seen dreadful things already, and here, the hands that ruled fate and daily decision also healed. “Russandol is restless at night,” she said, choosing her aim carefully. “Not like how he slept with us in the stables. We must let him have a closed door at night, and bring him friendly faces in the morning.”

“You stay there,” Frog said. He had learned how to pout with astonishing swiftness and ease.

Estrela stooped to slip an arm around his shoulders. “Are you lonely, little one?”

“Don’t whine,” Sticks said, embarrassed. As Frog had learned to exacerbate his charms, Stick was painfully conscious of late. She would make bold inquiries, just as she always had, but if they were rejected by means of a reason that seemed fair to her, she was covered with confusion.

At least, so it seemed to Estrela.

 _Would that I had had a little shyness to temper me, in youth—_ But no. Nothing she could put a finger on would change her past.

“In the morning,” she said, embracing them both, “I will ask Russandol especially, if you may come.”

She herself had left in haste, not wanting him to send her away.

Maglor found her in the common hall, tucking a borrowed quilt over Sticks and Frog, who had agreed to sleep side by side. Maglor stood, stalled in his errand, with his eyes fixed on the children. A queer little tremor passed over his mobile face, as though the sight of their trusting repose pained him.

Estrela was returned in memory to Russandol cast in similar stillness. A smile for the little ones had, then, seemed to pain him as much as a blow.

“Maglor?” she said softly, to break his reverie.

“Maitimo’s asking for you,” he said, shaking himself. “Fingon thinks we’ve crowded him too much, and is insisting on _shifts_. I think _I_ had better be present when he wakes in the morning, you know? And so, if you are not too tired—”

It was not apparent, exactly, whether Russandol had concocted the order of who should sit by him at what hour, but Estrela was a pitiful creature, as well she knew, and _asking for you_ was enough. She kissed the brow of each child with her ugly lips and hurried to follow Maglor down the hall.

“He seems uneasy,” Maglor confided, his energy returning. He appeared to love a conference, however grim its subject. “Did you see aught amiss with him, when you left you around suppertime?”

She did not want to betray Finrod. She knew too little of their shared past to have anything _to_ betray. It was Russandol—Maedhros—who had acted strangely, anyway, sending Fingon away.

_You make me put so fine a point on it._

“As his body heals,” Estrela said carefully, “His mind shall have more time to trouble him.”

“Ah,” Maglor sighed. “I can see how that would be so. Damn me, did their cruelty know no end? They have given him so much to _mull_ on, as well as to mend. And it still—it still must _hurt_ , doesn’t it?”

Her eye; the lines of her mouth. Sometimes they pained her, sharp with memory, but in the days that her agony was truly raw and frightening, new and bloody, time had been torture itself. Every moment a lifetime, and every lifetime a death.

“I think some wounds shall pain him long,” she said. “But healing is a strange business, Maglor. Hope returns, too, I believe.”

This seemed to move him. “You are very brave,” he said, with a smile that was more of a moonbeam than a sunbeam, but of course, as beautiful as dusk or dawn. They were all like that, Russandol’s brothers: very beautiful, and very wild.

Russandol must have been so afraid for their lives, knowing how his own was ransomed by its own flesh.

“I am not brave,” said Estrela, and because they had arrived at the door, she bowed her head.

“Goodnight, Maglor. Shall Fingon send for you when it is time?”

“Oh no—I sleep fitfully.” His smile was more superior, now, and thus a little less dazzling. “I’ll wake myself.”

Estrela knocked, and Fingon opened the door. “Here she is, Maedhros,” he said. “I shall return in a few hours, Estrela, or sooner, if you call.”

She vowed not to call unless Russandol—Maedhros—asked her too. But she nodded, and because, like Maglor, Fingon was smiling, she did her best to smile in return.

Then she took the chair, and tucked her hands between her knees. She had forgotten to bring her mending.

Russandol was flushed, and had not greeted her. The flush might be fever, or high emotion, kept in his breast—she had grown used to reading his moods, and divining his color, by candlelight. There was always a candle burning in the room; he was never allowed darkness.

“Thank you,” he said, as soon as Fingon’s footsteps echoed away, but he did not look at her. He stared upward.

“For coming?” she ventured. “I do not mind.”

“I know you do not,” he said, almost without moving his jaw.

She thought of what Maglor had said. “Your…does it hurt very badly?”

“Less if I don’t speak of it.”

“Oh.”

“The trap has two doors,” he went on. “I don’t know which snaps shut sooner. If I send them away, they’ll know I’m going mad, scavenging for what privacy I can. If I keep them here—” He stopped short. Swallowed. “But you’ll think I insult you.”

What did that matter? “They know you better,” she said, thinking now not of Maglor, nor of anyone she had met lately. She could taste salt if she bit her tongue hard enough. “And so, you cannot hide from them.”

_O pai…Father…_

He did not answer. He did not have to.

“You can hide from me, if you wish,” she said. She offered humor, a poor gift, but one of the few she had. “I am at a disadvantage.”

He turned his head sharply at that. “You know,” he said, low and desperate. “You _know_.”

“Russandol…” She missed the man with two hands, hair damp and clean on his brow. That had been her healing, somehow, through much pain.

“I am too selfish to let you sleep,” he whispered. “Yet, as I seem doomed to live forever, I pray I’ll have time to repay you. It’s just that I—I can’t keep him behind my lips a moment longer. And I’ll bite my tongue out before I say as much to Fingon.”

Disturbed, she shifted her hands, so that they were clasped in each other. Like this, she could hold to something. Hold to herself. “Do you speak of…Bauglir?”

They had spoken so little of the darkest bond of all. When she had two eyes, the serpent-tongue wound round her throat, and when he had two hands, it came again to gloat and demand. But Estrela had not asked, _why did he choose you?_ and had not justified such an inquiry with an account of her own history. Not to him. But—

“Maglor told me,” he said. “How you…came to know him.”

Maglor and his secrets were soon parted. Estrela was not angry; she did not feel that she _could_ be angry at Maglor, soul of Russandol’s soul. It was terribly, wonderfully evident that Russandol had built a world and a fortress around Maglor, and that only _his_ loss had endangered the walls of mind and body upon which Maglor depended for strength.

“It is not a pleasant story,” she said, as lightly as she could. “You would not enjoy hearing it.”

“You would not enjoy telling it, you mean.”

She wanted to be brave, as he was. She blinked steadily, breathed steadily, and said, “I was eighteen. I told you _that_. I was proud. We had been ashore and settled only a few years. My—my father made maps, you see. I think I said already—never mind.” Here was the dreadful part, made blunt and unimportant by rough-spoken words. “Melkor Bauglir had a fancy for them. And then, for me.”

She could see it all—she could always see the past in full, unshadowed.

“I told him I would rather die than marry him. He told me he should not forget it. They took me not long after—took me from the street. And they made me as I am now. So swiftly, in truth, that it—it surprised me.” Her eye, rolling in Mairon’s fingers. Her screams, torn from her throat. “I was not given another choice.”

She saw his hand move. She was seated at his left. It was almost as if his reached for hers, but not quite.

“He gave me many choices,” he said. “But they all came to nothing, in the end.”

Gwindor had seen him, up in the mountain, led to and fro for Bauglir’s pleasure. The darkness there, the deep mountain darkness, still made her very afraid—as if the storm passed, silent and watching, overhead.

“Not nothing,” she said, scrabbling for a scrap more of that bravery which he wore so selflessly, and which she so prized. “For you said _no_ , and you lived. We both—” She must have faith, and speak as if she believes also in her own worth—“Lived.”

Low, very low, he asked, “Is that so comforting?”

And she returned: “Is it comfort you want?”

“I would have liked them to slit my throat,” he said. “They had knives enough for it.”

“Forgive me,” she said, feeling the knife in his mouth and hers. “For not knowing, after all, what you know. I was only chosen to be soon cast aside.”

“No,” he countered, as sharp as he had ever been with her. “So was I. My use was not…well, there were a number of paths to try and fail. A trap with many doors, for me.”

She could not help herself; the tears came again.

“Estrela,” he said, in his softer voice—his voice for Maglor and Fingon when he coaxed, for Gwindor when he pleaded. “Don’t weep for me. We will call Fingon again, and I shall be quiet as a mouse for him.”

He was lying. She knew he was lying. She had heard his nightmares, and seen his anxious blush. He would not be quiet until he had found _something_ to cling to; until some horror was gone.

“I’ll just cry a little,” she said. “I won’t go away.”

“You are like—” He did not finish the thought. “I hate to hurt you,” he said. “I hate this body and soul of mine always, as you know, but I wish I could make something pretty or pleasant of myself, for you…for all of them.”

She was blushing now. He did not seem to notice.

“I _could_ do that, once,” he said. “But no longer. I don’t know what I will do when Fingon stands me up and walks me about. I suppose I shall be a living gallows, for fools to hang their hopes upon.”

“I’m a fool, then,” she said.

“I insult you again,” he said, sighing. “You see how I fell into all my trouble. It’s no wonder they muzzled me, all told, though the thing wasn’t made to punish my wicked tongue.”

“ _Cristo_ ,” she exclaimed, forgetting herself. “No, no. Don’t. Don’t speak of—”

He smiled. “You remember that, do you?”

“Russandol, I am not wholly blind. It was dreadful.”

“It was payment for biting Bauglir,” he said, proud as a child. That, too, was dreadful in its way. “A tooth and a mouthful of metal, and a good many tears, but I drew blood from him.”

She was too overcome to answer. And then he was overcome also, and a shudder passed through his body, so violently that he groaned.

“Jesus,” he said, as she moved as Fingon sometimes did, holding his shoulder firmly. “A coward, I am. A goddamn—coward—” And then, just as she drew back, he reached for her at last.

It was like this: his hand on her arm; his thumb pressed to the crook of her elbow. His eyes on her face, brighter than the candle’s flame, as they reflected it.

“Estrela,” he said. “I cannot get free of him. Every moment—his voice in my head, his breath on my cheek. How do you bear it? How do you chase him away?”

 _He returned to my dreams when you came into my life_.

She longed to say anything but that, and she longed more fervently still, to touch his face and tangled hair with gentle fingers.

She could not, of course, touch him any more than he touched her already.

“He threw me away,” she murmured, her arm still in his grasp. “He cut his bride to pieces and never thought of her again. It is like he took that eye, and it belongs to him, but this eye does not. This eye cannot see him anymore, save in a wild thought or errant dream.”

She could not tell if this answer satisfied him. Slowly, he raised his maimed wrist from the bedclothes. “Does this hand, then, belong to him?”

“He claimed it,” she said daring to wrest sweet from bitter. “He cut it off.”

“Ah yes,” Russandol said. He loosed her arm. “So he did.”

“So. You must let it go.”

He breathed raggedly.

“I do not mean that it is _right_ ,” she said. “I do not credit the devil himself. I only mean—there are still thoughts in my head that are not _his_. There are the children. And Gwindor.” _And you._ “Even those who are gone before us. And all the happiness we find—you know the children are happy here, when they are not worried over you. All of that, I see with this eye.”

He shook his head; little more than a tremble. “They should not worry over me. The little ones.” He always said such things.

Often, their conversations of late had visited the same haunts.

Estrela did not mind. She said, “But they love you. How could they not love you? The first time they met you, you saved them.”

And he saved them again after that—at the end of a life, for him. He was thinking of that, now. She could see it in the lines of his face.

“So I am to forget— _him_ —” he ventured, “Because he has forgotten me?”

“Yes,” she said, on firm ground again. “He does not understand us, though he cuts us open. Though he takes parts of ourselves. He is brutal, and he is _stupid_ , for he thought we would choose his desire for us, out of our own fears.”

“And we would never choose him.” His voice was growing weary. He had hidden his wrist under the blanket again.

“No,” she said. There was a lie inside her, but not in these words. “No, we would never choose him.”

He nodded. That, too, was little more than a tremble. Then he thanked her again, and appeared to sleep.

God, _prayed the girl on the deck, brown-skinned and black-haired, she who laughed with the sailors and the sea,_ Give me love, and children, and every map of the high land, every chart of the wide oceans.

_She did not pray to the sun, exactly. She did not worship the created in her prayers to the Creator. But her eyes met its brightness for an instant, before the world went white._


	2. Chapter 2

It was strange to love in a world that hated you. Yet Estrela had never been without love, save for one wild hour of pain. Even when she woke to blind, ruined slavery, Amlach’s mother was there.

Tawanna, _beautiful running water_ , her friend.

 _Amlach is his name_ , Tawanna said, in dying. _Keep it safe._

And then a squalling baby was laid in Estrela’s arms, and there was love again. Living in dying. _Frog-face_ become _Frog_ , hatred protecting him.

Her children; her grey friend Gwindor. The women whose hair she cut ragged, whose faces she daubed with mud and paint to make them look ill, to make them look boyish. Haldar, dying too young.

 _If he was always meant to die_ , Gwindor had said bitterly, and she had told him,

_No._

She had held Gwindor very tightly, this day. She had been grateful to love in the open air, where there was no need to hide, to brush close and secret, to comfort the heart with a brief grip of hands alone.

Estrela made her way back up the hill, leaving him sitting by the shore with the wind on his face. He had said he was well enough, thank you. Just needed a little time. She had given him not only time, but a promise. A promise to take his shift with Russandol tonight.

_I don’t mind—_

_I know you don’t. But it would do you good, to rest. Without worrying over him._

Her heart was as full as a cup overflowing. Broken lips or not, weary tongue or not—words moved through her sometimes, as readily as her ink had once moved over maps. Under the sunset, she set her booted feet one in front of the other, the tears still drying in her eyes.

She would go at once to see Russandol, she decided. She would be a little bolder. Remembering how Gwindor had been taken from her before she had even had the chance to be a true friend—remembering the tremendous gift of his return, marred and burdened though it was by their beleaguered stations—

_Now that Russandol is with us, I shall not lose him to my own unworthiness, or my own pride. He does not belong to me. We are family._

That would be more than enough.

She nodded in greeting to some of the faces inside—Caranthir, who was increasingly friendly (in his own blunt way), and Tabitha, and Aredhel walking with her quick bright step—but at the turn of the hall she met Nora.

They had not spoken much since their meeting in the garden, when Estrela had cried. Perhaps Nora could still see traces of tears on her face. _Ten years_ , Estrela had told her then: a confidence of a moment.

“Estrela—” Nora said, as if she bit a question off at the root.

It was kind of her, to remember the name. “Hello, Nora.”

More tentatively than she ever spoke before, Nora explained herself and the basket in her arms. “I…I am collecting the washing. Is there any from the sickroom?”

 _The sickroom._ He was not ill, but they all spoke and thought of his resting place as such. There was no fear of disease over-hanging their watchful days and nights; only fear, yet, of death.

Estrela’s full heart pounded in her chest. She reminded herself to answer the inquiry properly.

“I believe…” she did not want to offend. “I believe Caranthir has collected it all.”

“But you are going in to him?”

Estrela nodded.

And here was the _real_ question, brought back to life. Estrela should have recognized well the look of longing in the woman’s eye (eyes). “Might I…I know that I impose—but might I come with you? I have not seen him at all, since he was returned to us. And—”

A world, unspoken, in that final pause. Had Estrela really not known? Nora was a strong woman. Thin and a little worn from a hard life, yes, but handsome. Capable. Though she looked a good deal older than Russandol, she was _eligible_ —and Estrela would have had no right to judge, were she not.

 _He_ had had a life here. A life, and doubtless, dreams. Estrela ducked her head, hoping that her scars concealed her feeling. “Let me speak to Fingon,” she said. “I—he will know whether Russandol is well enough—”

“We were good friends, Estrela,” Nora said, a little less desperately. Now Estrela felt the point of a dagger, not quite Nora’s, in her breast. Nora had not spoken sharply. She had only leaned a little closer to the truth that Estrela shied so fiercely from.

“I’ll be but a moment,” Estrela mumbled, still avoiding her eye.

Fingon, as it turned out, was not in the room. Fingolfin was, reading as usual. Russandol was asleep. Estrela had to greet Fingolfin, and she did, but her heart, still beating treacherously, wanted only to drink of Russandol. To look at him and read peace in him. To see, without forcing him to wakefully suffer scrutiny, the precious patches of his unscarred and healing flesh.

She yearned to learn all the life that was left in Russandol, so as to guard it better.

(It was not her place.)

“There is a friend come to see him,” Estrela said, when Fingolfin had asked her errand. She must have an errand, mustn’t she? Standing with one hand on the door. “A woman—Nora, of the fort. She will not stay, I think. She only asked if she might collect the washing. And I did not know—”

“If she is quiet, it is no trouble,” Fingolfin answered, closing the book over a plait of braided thread. “He has been sleeping quietly for an hour, or so. And we should not wall him away, forever, from his friends.”

Estrela opened the door. She met Nora’s eyes. They were standing close enough to one another that Nora could not enter until Estrela stepped aside.

Estrela stepped aside. “He is sleeping,” she said, in a low voice. “Come in.”

Nora, upon seeing Russandol, pressed the back of her hand against her mouth. “Oh, poor Maedhros!” she said, in a harsh half-whisper. “He is grown so terribly thin.” Then, casting about the room anxiously, “What can I take? How I can be of help? I feel as if I must do _something_ for him, else I shall go mad.”

 _Remember:_ When Nora had last known him, he was not knife-carved. He had two hands.

Estrela knew, firmly and despairingly, that he must have been beautiful and brave. She knew _that_ always.

How his brothers must have followed him! How all these people must have worshiped him. Melkor Bauglir and his torturers had not been able to strip that guiding brightness from him, even when they flayed his skin. That brightness flowed in his blood.

(Estrela had prayed, once, that she might save him.)

“There are some linens in the corner there,” Fingolfin suggested gently. “Perhaps—”

“Thank you,” Nora said, but she did not go to the corner. She stepped nearer to the bedframe instead. From the waist down, Russandol was concealed beneath the same blanket as always. His upper body was shrouded by an old shirt, for comfort’s sake. Its folds rose and fell with his breath. His bitten lips were parted.

Estrela never touched him unless invited to do so, by Fingon’s need or by Russandol’s own, outstretched hand. As such, she did not foresee Nora’s next movement, which was to snatch the shirt away from him.

Remember: _All his long body, crumpling and moving as a dying thing does, shifting its limbs into ghost-shapes of memory. The overseer’s hard hands tearing—tearing—tearing—until his shirt and trousers were in shreds around him. The miserable band of the slaves who did not save their own, as he tried to, looking upon his violation in awful silence._

_Perhaps they saw themselves in him. But such mute sympathy mattered not at all._

_Not at all._

Russandol’s eyes, blazing, and Russandol’s left and only hand seizing Nora’s wrist—

Fingolfin, at that moment, had been doing already what Estrela could not. Fingolfin, his book falling from his lap, had wrested the shirt from Nora. She did not resist him; she had gasped in horror, had said, _Oh God, oh God_. Having driven curiosity to its hilt, Nora now saw what Estrela saw—the beaten ribs and smooth-pooled marks of burns, she saw _whore_ carved in tender skin like the curse it was—but she did not see it as Estrela saw it.

Nora saw a man ruined. Nora made a frightened sound when Russandol grasped her wrist, but Estrela did not think she looked _ashamed_. The fear and loathing had been fixed upon her face before he woke.

And now—

“Maedhros,” said Fingolfin, steady and low.

 _How dare you_ , Estrela stormed in silence. _How dare you recoil from him!_

But did she even dare herself, to match anger with loyalty, if she did not speak aloud?

There was no time to decide. Fingolfin spoke again. “Maedhros, let her go.”

Russandol was strong, still strong, holding Nora fast. His mouth trembled as if words were rising to it, breaking on his tongue. Upon his uncle’s order, though, his fingers unfurled. His hand fell.

How he must love Fingolfin, Estrela thought, through her muddled grief, that he would obey him without question.

It was over, then. Nora fled from the room, leaving the basket behind her. Leaving, too, the memory of her disgust. It seemed to hang over Russandol as he lay rigid in the bed, the wasted muscles of his scarred chest drawn tense. He asked at last, as flatly as he used to speak to the slavers,

“What happened?”

Fingolfin rearranged the shirt over him; a fatherly touch. Estrela, already biting the scars along her inner cheeks to keep from weeping, was so overcome by this latest kindness that she bowed her head. It was too much to ask, of course, that they forget her—too much to ask that blame fall to anyone but her.

But—“It was my mistake,” Fingolfin said. “I let Nora in to take the washing. I should have been more discerning. I am deeply sorry.”

Russandol said, “I was a little startled, that is all. How long did I sleep?”

“An hour.” Fingolfin eased himself back into his chair. “I shall speak to this Nora, and tell her—”

“No, please don’t,” Russandol interrupted. “It doesn’t matter.” He was as close to petulance as he ever came; not in words, so much, as in tone. That was a change for him; he must be truly distressed. Estrela stood mute in her unearned sympathy.

“What doesn’t matter?” Fingolfin asked.

“The whole mess of me. The _scars_. I know you all think they must be hidden and—for once I’m too tired for goddamn shame.” He shut his eyes and turned his face to the pillow. Estrela could bear it no longer; she slipped from the room.

Her promise to Gwindor remained, however. She had taken his shift for the night—to be shared, it was likely, with Maglor and Celegorm at various junctures—and she would not relinquish it. Her own failure… _No_. It was more than a failure. It was a betrayal, for the earliest secret of Russandol’s that she had known was his hatred of exposure to prying eyes. Her own _betrayal_ of Russandol, then, could not restore a burden to Gwindor’s shoulders. He considered it no trouble to sit beside his friend, but the task weighed on him in mind and body. His shoulder would seize up, like that, and his heart, too.

Estrela had never known—and never asked—the particulars of his losses, but she had heard the rumors long ago. Rumors that Gwindor the Soldier, he of the twisted arm, of Gothmog’s mysterious and dreadful favoritism, had a blood-feud with Mairon the Hunter.

Mairon meant death. Since Gwindor lived, he lived with the loss of another. His loyalty to new friends, his acceptance of new fears, were signs of his wondrous bravery, his still-open heart. Estrela admired him beyond expression, and also knew full well how the sight of Russandol, marked time and again by Mairon’s cruelty, must pain good Gwindor.

Perhaps she pained him, too. Russandol’s grief was nearer in time, however, and so Estrela spared them both only what she could. At least that had been her aim…that had been her hope.

What a pity that she was also a fool, trusting the word of anyone who asked her favor.

What a pity that she was also a coward.

She could not bring herself to eat much at supper. Nora was not at the table; that was one mercy. But she _would_ see Nora again, and soon. It was not possible to avoid her forever, and what then?

“You’re brooding,” said Sticks, narrowing her eyes.

Estrela felt all the shame that Nora had not, there in the sickroom. Sticks was a child, though a hard-bitten one, and _she_ would have flown at Nora like a wildcat at the slightest provocation. Estrela had no doubt of it.

Fingolfin opened the door for her when she knocked. A small change, yet a meaningful one. He would not be caught unawares again. He would not readily trust again. Even with brothers, cousins, friends around him, Russandol could quickly become no safer in Mithrim than he had been in the shadow of the mountain. All that was needed was prurience; the prying eyes of those who looked for _use_ , who ached for power. Estrela did not know Russandol’s history with Nora, but she knew now that Nora did not love him. No one _could_ love, who so quickly reviled. It was the one truth poor Belle had held, as something that belonged to her, as something drawn from Estrela’s own knowledge. The cruel world had allowed her a surprisingly steady stream of love, yes, but she herself had known what love was _not_.

Despite his caution, Fingolfin’s face was open and friendly, if a little wearied by the sallow lamp-glow. “Estrela,” he said. “Good—you’ve come to join us.”

How could it be _good_?

“Gwindor is resting tonight,” she said, her face burning. A blush would not show against her olive skin, not in this light. For that, she was grateful. “I will stay in his stead, if—” _If you allow it. If_ he _desires it._

Fingolfin was not Russandol’s only companion. Fingon was in _his_ usual chair, drawn up very close to the head of the bed. He and Russandol were talking in low voices, and neither of them favored her with dark judgment. Fingon greeted her by name, and Russandol gave one of his furtive half-smiles.

Fingon must not know, Estrela decided. Alhough he and Celegorm were quite unlike in other respects, they shared so fierce-burning a loyalty as to make ready enemies of those who did not care for Russandol in exactly the fashion they deemed best.

As she admired Gwindor, she admired them. As she did not know them half so well as she knew Gwindor, she also feared them a little, at least as far as failing Russandol was concerned.

A good concealment, then, that she had brought mending. She was used to working more by touch than sight; her one eye tired easily, and there had been no lamps in the slave barracks, when she patched the children’s rags. Even now, unhappy as she was, she could imagine herself there again, her forefinger tracing prior stitches. On so many nights like this, she would have sat up late and alone, waiting for weeping women to creep in for her comfort, waiting for Frog to soften her plight with his desire to be held like a baby.

Yet Fingon brought her back, back to this new room. These new hopes and griefs. In his boyish voice, Fingon was speaking of birds. He said he had been surprised to hear so many sing in wintertime. He wished to know them better; that Finrod and Beren must be his guides—he dared not ask Celegorm.

“Celegorm would tell you all he knew, I am sure,” said Russandol.

“I don’t want him to know my ignorance,” Fingon answered. He was smiling again, even laughing a little, but there was something a little hesitant in that laughter.

Momentarily diverted from her own troubles, Estrela reflected: reflected on what she knew and did not know (of Fingon’s knives, of Celegorm’s anger). For one thing, she did not know their past.

Humbled once more, she returned to feeling out her work.


	3. Chapter 3

Fingolfin asked Fingon to accompany him to late supper, and Fingon agreed. Another surprise—that Fingolfin should believe her capable of keeping watch alone, after the afternoon’s display—and another assurance, that Fingon did not know of the entire affair. Still, she waited, with her gaze lowered, for Russandol to make some protest, silent or spoken.

He did not. The door closed quietly.

Estrela drove her needle into the un-pricked fabric.

Fingon kept time by his pocket-watch: a beautiful creation wrought in silver. There was no other clock in Mithrim that Estrela had yet seen. As such, it had been more than a decade now that she had heard a clock ticking, but at the moment, she could have sworn her pulse rang with the seconds.

She might as well have been nestled in one of her father’s parlor chairs, listening to time pass.

She could not _quite_ pretend to be alone.

Russandol cleared his throat. “You know,” he said, rather haltingly, “There is better light beside me.”

“Better light?” Estrela asked, looking up.

The lamp was to his left. It could not soften his countenance, but it did wonders in his hair. He lay now with his hand flat and high against his breast, almost grasping at his throat, though both hand and throat were otherwise still. She wondered how long he had been watching her.

“For your work,” he said. “You’ll strain yourself, sewing in the dark.”

“I am quite used to it,” she murmured. “But I thank you.”

“Lord, Estrela.” This, half jesting in tone, and then—“I’m quite willing to beg—”

This startled her. “Beg?”

“I’ve no pride left,” he said. “You know that. So, will you tell me what I’ve done to vex you? Please?”

Another dagger, sister to that which had plunged through her at the thought of Nora’s love, at the sight of Nora’s horror. Estrela lurched to her feet. She had been sitting on Celegorm’s bench—daring to do so only because he was not there, and because she had not wanted to be offered a chair close to Russandol’s side, just then.

But now he was _asking_ something of her.

Awkward and stiff, she crossed to sit at his left. Ordinarily, she liked to sit there because she believed that he did not want anyone looking long at his missing hand.

Also, on one occasion, he had touched her with the hand he had.

“I am not vexed,” she said. The light _was_ better here, of course, but she knew her stitches would be all the more uneven.

“Oh.” He blinked. “Forgive me for suggesting it. But is it—would you rather someone else sit up? I hate that anyone should lose a precious hour of sleep, sitting beside someone who will rail and rest with equal misery if left alone—”

“We don’t want to leave you alone,” she said. “You should not have to be alone.”

“And you should not have to coddle an invalid, when you are tired. What a week you’ve had, by my side. Blood and bile, nightmares and…other exhibitions.”

Her tears would speak if she did not. “Your uncle kindly shielded me from blame,” she said. “But it was my fault that—it was my fault that you were disturbed, this afternoon.”

“What do you mean?”

She would not betray him with half-truths. “Nora met me in the hall,” she said. “And said that she wished to visit you, as a friend.”

“Ah.” He plucked at the rumpled collar that splayed across his shoulder. “Well, I daresay I gave _her_ the greater fright. Poor woman, to see so much more than she bargained for!”

“No!” she said, with the vehemence that should have been aimed at Nora. “No—no, how can you talk so? It was horrid. It was very wrong of her, to treat you so, to—” She realized that she had raised her voice, and stopped abruptly. _There_ was the storm, breaking from her bones: a greater threat than tears.

“You misunderstand a little,” he said. “I know that it…” He grimaced, as if pained, and shifted his shoulders. “I know that I’m a sight. It is hard to look _past_ , for everyone good enough to care about me, and so in their busy care, they _don’t_.But try, Estrela. Put aside the abscess agonies, and the…damnable vomiting, and the fact that I’m still a dozen shades of black and blue no living man should be…” He paused, as if expecting interruption, but she made none. He stared straight up, into the shadows that wreathed the ceiling like smoke. “There _was_ a reason, you know. There were a good many reasons, and not all of them are as vile and dark as Bauglir’s.” His laugh, then, was thin as paper. “She took a liberty with a half-dead man, you see, because the living man was once quite eager for that sort of thing.”

Estrela still said nothing.

“I do not think you can be scandalized,” he continued earnestly, his eyes seeking her out again, “So I trust you’ll permit me to embarrass myself. I was a positive rake, in the old days, and if everyone wasn’t fretting over bone-broth and poultices here, I imagine the rumors might make poor Fingon blush yet.”

“You and Nora—” She must not mind, she _must not_ —“Were lovers, then?”

“No. Not exactly. I had tried to reform myself a little, when we arrived here. Bedding is bad for business, if you’re all to live in the same four walls forever. But as it turns out, I’m simply tragic at reformation. So Nora might have had an idea or two, she being a…sporting lass herself. I don’t deride her, mind you. A man with a belt as remarkable as mine can’t say much on the subject of moral living, can he?”

“I don’t understand,” she said, pained.

His brow furrowed.

“I mean,” she said, before he could keep on in this dreadful, flippant way of apologizing, “One has nothing to do with the other. If Nora _had_ been your—your lover, that is, she would have had no right to satisfy some sort of rude _curiosity_ without so much as a by-your-leave. And if you think that—” She forced herself to press on through the hideous confusion that accompanied the image of his hurts. “If you think that a curse carved into your flesh is a proper punishment, you are wrong.”

He asked, meekly, “But what do you think it was for?”

“It was for cruelty,” she said. And then, lifting her fingers to trace the hollow socket, she said, “What do you think _this_ was for?”

Now he was very pale. “That isn’t the same,” he said. “You were just a girl.”

“Maglor told me that you are not yet twenty-five,” she said. “You are just a boy, to me.”

That silenced him, for a moment.

“I lied to you,” she said, “Though I did not understand the lie myself, until this moment. I _have_ been vexed by you, but not because of any harm you have done to me.”

She would have to keep up her courage; naming him a boy had only made him younger and dearer, lying there.

“The harms you do yourself may still pain other people,” she said, choosing the words as carefully as she could. “When I met you, I did not know how much you hated yourself. You were so burdened, as we all were, by the hatred of others. More so,” she added, thinking of the grotesque mask; the brutal treatment. “But now you are surrounded by those who love you, and you…”

“Do you expect me to be happy?” They might easily have been angry words, but there was no ire in them.

“No,” she said. “But nor do I understand why you mistreat yourself further.”

“I was only trying to tell you the truth.” He had a little spirit now, arguing. “ _You_ were sorry, and you needn’t have been. Men’s vices, however curiously twisted by ill-luck, should not draw out a woman’s sympathies.”

She said, “It’s not a man’s vice.”

He did not answer; his eyes shuttered.

“Men who use women ill are not called—so,” she said. “I will not speak to you of pity. Even if I feel it in my breast, for my friends, I know how heavy it can weigh. But Russandol—”

“I’ve no pride left,” he said. “Didn’t I tell you? Not a rake, then. Just a whore.”

 _She_ tasted ire now, but he must have sensed how near he was treading to a proper scolding, for he quickly added,

“You said you were vexed. Surely it was not only over this.”

He was trying to get the better of her by facing her turmoil head-on. Another trick. She thought of Gwindor always talking of Russandol’s cheek, and thought of the charming and heart-aching defiances she had sometimes perceived in him after the terrible whipping.

She thought, also, of how he had not wanted to look at her, when his leg was very bad.

“You lied to me,” she said softly. Gwindor, steady and simple, would have told her not to stray the course, and he would have been right. “About your hand.”

He pressed his lips together. When he was well again, she imagined his mouth would be fuller and brighter. All his talk of lovers had made her uncomfortably aware of his beauty, though she had done her best to conceal such irrelevant thoughts on her face.

“It was Fingon’s secret.” He said that as if it answered everything.

“I do not mind that you kept it.”

Eyebrow and lip lifting together. “Don’t you?”

“I am vexed,” she said, “That when I spoke to you of Melkor and Mairon, taking my eye from me, you agreed that they had taken your hand.”

“They _did_.”

“But Fingon—”

“Fingon cut the rest of me clear of a trapped bit of putrid flesh and shattered bone. Haven't you heard him say so? He could not save both the hand, and me.”

The bitterness of it, and more than bitterness, blood—hung between them. A challenge. Or, more apt and awful, a gauntlet laid down. It was Estrela’s turn to bite her lips, to wish to shirk his gaze.

She said, quietly, “And yet you let us think the one who did the final deed as much a monster as the rest. You let us speak with horror of Fingon, and you let our horror pain you, over and over again, when we sought to lay our confused blame. That is what has made me—made me _unhappy_ , Russandol.”

“A thousand little blows,” he said, restored to equal softness. “Do you think it would be easier...for you and the rest…to recover from _one_ unhappiness only, even if it were rather greater in scale?”

She took his meaning at once. Fear and anger flooded her, and she could only thank her long years of thankless patience for the calm reply she made.

“No,” she said. “I do not want that great unhappiness. I do not want anything for you, but your lasting good. I have spoken amiss, if you can answer so. Again, I am sorry.”

“I am being a little cruel,” he whispered. “But mustn’t I be? Mustn’t I be a little cruel, so that your suffering—and Gwindor’s—and Fingon’s—can lessen, after a time?”

She never touched him without permission. She folded her hands into her mending instead. “When I thought you gone,” she said, “When I woke and waited for Gwindor, and he returned without you—” She paused, to compose herself. “A thousand little blows, after one great unhappiness, has been my lot, you know. But my heart broke that day. And I did not need a word from Gwindor. I needed only to see his heart broken, too.”

“If I were as good as you,” Russandol said, his eyes shining painfully, “I would say that you had vexed _me_ , now. The love of good friends is a darting arrow all its own, you know.” For the first time since his return—that _she_ had seen, at least—he lifted his hand to his hair and dragged his fingers through it. Then he grimaced, and said, abruptly, “Damn. Time has not improved the touch of it.”

“Fingon says it is malnourishment that has made it rough and thin,” she said. “And the sun—and no chance to comb it—”

“Or wash it,” he said. “Fingon must have plucked the lice out. Do you know I used to be quite vain over it?”

He was changing the subject, and she allowed him. “Of your hair?” Still, this was not exactly safe territory, for a person of her private inclinations. Searching for solid ground, she said, “It is a rare color.”

“I grew it longer than any schoolboy should have been allowed.” He had taken his hand from it and hidden it in a fold of his shirt again. “Fancied myself an Irish Brummel. Never mind that, now. Yours must be very wonderfully curly, when it grows—I can see it turning around your ears.”

She put her own hand to it, startled by the observation. She had been lost in thoughts of him—tall and graceful and quick-striding, his hair a bright banner. “Yes,” she said. “It does curl. But I have forgotten what it is like to wear it long.” He smiled sadly, without interrupting, and she shook her head, guessing another of his thoughts. “I cut it myself. I had no use for a mat of snarls. And it was not as hard as you might think, to borrow a knife and slip it back again. As long as I caused no other trouble.”

“Ah,” he said. “So you could have given me a proper blade, if I’d the presence of mind to ask.”

She huffed a breath. “I would not have given you a knife, Russandol. I would have been very afraid for what you might do with it.”

The smile widened; it did her sorry heart good. “Such wisdom,” he said. “Is that why I’m a boy to you?”

“I am twenty-eight,” she said. “If you must know.”

He inhaled sharply, hurting himself, and then hiding from that hurt. “Ten years?” he asked. “It was— _God_ almighty—”

“It is over now,” she said. He was always finding new ways to bring the tears to her eyes. She knew not one of those ways was intended to pain her. “It is over, and I am among friends.”

“What a soul you have,” he said, hushed. “It is like…it is like a clear ray of sunlight.”

“No,” she interrupted, quite embarrassed. “Please don’t praise my soul.”

This amused him. It would have been good to see humor twinkling in his eyes, if it had not been at her expense—and even so, she felt her ugly lips curving, smiling in return. “I’m very fond of lovely things,” he said. “But I shall keep my compliments to myself, if it dismays you so. We Irish must be kept in line.”

She cleared her throat. He was too knowing, and she, ignorant of all but a dim, beloved shape: the blur of untold memories, which could not belong to her, forming the brilliant creature he had been.

“I am interfering with your mending,” he said, when the moment had gone too long. “I should be shutting my eyes and trudging off to sleep now, shouldn’t I?”

She picked up her needle, to please him, and when her gaze was safely fixed on the folds of Amras’ old trousers—cut down for Frog, as they were far too short, now, for their original owner—she said, “I like to talk to you, Russandol. You needn’t sleep until you want to.”

“If I am just a boy, I should ask you for a story,” he murmured, half to himself. “As the children used to ask me.”

“I _will_ tell you a story,” she said, pulling the stitch straight. “But you might think it a scolding, since I’ve said so much already.”

“I don’t mind.” He coughed. “Every one of my good-souled friends scolds me. You…Gwindor…Fingon.”

“You could tell me about Fingon,” she said, her heart beating a little quicker. Russandol was half man, half mystery, of course, but she could sometimes sense the darkest shadows in him. Almost, she could trace them with an imagined pen and ink, as if she was at her maps again.

Fingon seemed, for him, to hold both darkness and light.

Accordingly, his mood changed at once. “Fingon?” he asked. “What is it that you wish to know of Fingon?”

“He is your cousin,” she said. “And your dear friend. I do not remember my cousins well; we left Portugal when I was six, my father and I. They all remained behind us. I…I admit I am fascinated by all your family.”

“Before he wanted to be a doctor, he wanted to be a priest.” Russandol’s legs shifted beneath the coverlets. Estrela had not been present for an observation of the wound left behind by Fingon’s blade, but she knew it must have distressed Russandol to have another scar, however small, added to his collection of them. It was exactly this sort of confusion that she felt obliged to pursue. She prayed to be delivered from curiosity; to be guided only by good will, like a thing hovering in the air above her. The will of an angel, perhaps.

She wanted something a little gentler than God.

But Fingon, of course, would be able to face God directly. “A priest?” Estrela echoed. “I can see it. He is very devout.”

“Is he?”

 _He looks at you like he is praying_ , she thought, but even as the words formed, they no longer felt right to say.

“He is younger than you,” she said.

“Four years,” he agreed. Then: “A boy.”

She nodded, the joke understood. She could not help but see, however, glancing from her miniscule stitches to the faint lines of strain in his face, that the humor had gone from him.

_What is that you wish to know of Fingon?_

_I want to know if you are angry with him. I want to know if you remember, as viciously as you spoke of it, what it was like when he cut off your hand._

(She—remembered. The eyelid. The eye. Her hands jerking against the cuffs strung overhead. She had been too shocked to beg. It had been over so quickly.)

(She remembered the taste of her blood.)

“You look tired,” she said. “You should sleep.”

“Fingon is painfully good,” said Russandol. “He has never sinned in his life, but he doesn’t know it.”

“Everyone sins,” said Estrela.

“You have to believe that a thing is wrong,” Russandol said, but the spirit wasn’t in it. The words dragged, still, for he wouldn’t let them go. He wouldn’t sleep. “Fingon never believes himself to be wrong.”

He had caught her in a trap at last. Had it been anyone but Fingon, she might have said, _Bauglir never believes himself to be wrong, either, but what good is that to us? To anyone?_

But she didn’t want to say that they were alike. “What do you mean?” she asked instead, fumbling.

“Just what I said,” Russandol said. “Greed…lust…lies…he’s untouched by all of it. He is proud, but not to a fault. We _are_ proud in our family. He can’t help it.”

“You are generous,” she said. “You always speak well of other people. No doubt Fingon learned some of his virtues from you.”

His cheeks and lips twitched. His shoulders were stiff. She recognized the flash of deep physical pain, but she did not know what to do with it yet.

“Fingon doesn’t listen to me,” Russandol whispered. Then his jaw snapped open and shut—his body arched—his face went bloodless and grey—

All this, in silence.

“Russandol,” she said, rising so that she could help him, if he wished it—only then— “What is it?”

He opened his eyes like a man jolted to wakefulness. “Nothing,” he said tightly. “It’s gone. It’s past.”

She fetched him a little water. He shook his head.

“I’ll choke it up. It’s all right.”

She expected him to smile at her, then, a false, frail thing—but he didn’t. “Is it…is it your leg?” she asked.

“No.” Not merely a shine, now; the tears stood out in his eyes.

“Your—arm?” But that was wrong too. She knew the truth instinctively; knew it to the deep hollow where Mairon’s blade had scored through the root of her eye. Years after the wound had healed—years after it knew no natural sensation—it burned and bled and wept, in some forever-darkness where, horribly afraid, she never left that dungeon-room.

“Russandol.” She had unwillingly retaken her seat. “Is it your hand? Can you feel it still?”

The slightest nod. She was reminded of Frog, in a touching instant. Frog when he had a nightmare, but was still frightened to cry.

“Oh, my dear,” she cried, forgetting herself at last—forgetting restraint, and reserve, and anything but him. “I am sorry—I am so sorry. What can I do?”

He turned his face away from her, but the shirt over his breast and body moved, his left hand drawing forth from it. He offered it to her, still without looking.

She took it, as she knew Gwindor sometimes did, between both of her own. To do so, she came forward on her knees, her forearms resting on the bed.

His fingers were long, and his hold was like a vise. She bore the pain willingly, staying thus until he slept.


End file.
